2024-03-29T05:41:20Zhttp://digital.csic.es/dspace-oai/requestoai:digital.csic.es:10261/1802852019-04-26T07:22:34Zcom_10261_13com_10261_8col_10261_266
Consistency of impact assessment protocols for non-native species
González-Moreno, Pablo
Lazzaro, Lorenzo
Vilà, Montserrat
Preda, Cristina
Adriaens, Tim
Bacher, Sven
Brundu, Giuseppe
Copp, Gordon H.
Essl, Franz
García-Berthou, Emili
Katsanevakis, Stelios
Environmental impact
Expert judgement
Invasive alien species policy
Management prioritization
Risk assessment
Socio-economic impact
Standardized tools are needed to identify and prioritize the most harmful non-native species (NNS). A
plethora of assessment protocols have been developed to evaluate the current and potential impacts of
non-native species, but consistency among them has received limited attention. To estimate the consistency
across impact assessment protocols, 89 specialists in biological invasions used 11 protocols to screen
57 NNS (2614 assessments). We tested if the consistency in the impact scoring across assessors, quantified
as the coefficient of variation (CV), was dependent on the characteristics of the protocol, the taxonomic
group and the expertise of the assessor. Mean CV across assessors was 40%, with a maximum of 223%.
CV was lower for protocols with a low number of score levels, which demanded high levels of expertise,
and when the assessors had greater expertise on the assessed species. The similarity among protocols with
respect to the final scores was higher when the protocols considered the same impact types. We conclude
that all protocols led to considerable inconsistency among assessors. In order to improve consistency, we
highlight the importance of selecting assessors with high expertise, providing clear guidelines and adequate
training but also deriving final decisions collaboratively by consensus
Peer reviewed
2019-04-22T07:24:05Z
2019-04-22T07:24:05Z
2019
artículo
http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_6501
Neobiota, 44: 1–25 (2019)
http://hdl.handle.net/10261/180285
10.3897/neobiota.44.31650
en
Publisher's version
http://dx.doi.org/10.3897/neobiota.44.31650
Sí
open
Pensoft Publishers